As with any first day, it was bound to be a long one....
After making our way out to our kitchen in West Berkeley, unloading our second car load of equipment and other supplies in as many days, and getting set up, we were FINALLY able to get down to the business of actually cooking the caramels (insert golf clap here). All the work over the past few months to get to the point of actually producing... all the testing, legal paperwork, research, more testing, infinity samples handed out, design work, packaging, more testing... Just to get here. It was somewhat surreal to actually get down to business, but definitely in a good way!
We soon fell into a rhythm. Mostly it was Sugar running around the kitchen while the stirring and temperature monitoring was left to the help. However, as it turns out, the cooking wasn't any more complicated at the scaled up batch sizes (phew!). Since we were the only ones in the kitchen on Saturday, the whole place took on a sweet aroma that made the neighboring businesses jealous.
For reference, the photo below is of a pot of approximately 4 gallons of 230ºF+ bubbling cauldron of sweet caramel goodness, that wooden spoon? Over 3ft long.
After we had cooked the caramel, it was time to cut and wrap. Fairly straight forward until you realize that there are over 4000 caramels that needed to be wrapped by hand! Hey, at least they looked nice in the pans, right?
Thankfully, we soon realized that if we were going to get the job done that night, we had to call in some reinforcements. We had some great friends come out and help us get all the caramels wrapped up so that everyone can now officially order them on our site!
Take a peek at some of our early packaging, to see what our customers will be getting very, very soon!
Hope everyone had a great weekend, and hope to see you at the launch party at SIP on Tuesday!
-Cap'n Rob
p.s. Launch Party details here!
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